Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to facsimile processing and more particularly to determining facsimile requirements when processing a facsimile.
Description of the Related Art
Traditionally, documents have been exchanged between parties by way of hand delivery, postal service, or facsimile. More recently, the public Internet has become a highly effective medium through which electronic documents have been exchanged, particularly as attachments to electronic mail. Still, in many occasions, the use of electronic mail cannot provide an adequate medium for document transfer. Specifically, where the original copy of a document is in a hard copy format, with handwritten or non-textual elements, a facsimile device can be the preferred tool of document exchange.
Facsimile devices ordinarily exchange facsimile data with other facsimile devices over the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Specifically, as in the case of an ordinary telephone call, the calling facsimile device can establish a communicative link over the PSTN to a receiving facsimile device. Each of the devices can negotiate suitable data exchange protocols and the transfer of facsimile data can commence. Upon completion of the exchange, the received facsimile data can be transposed to hard copy form and the call can terminate. Of note, several technologies have been developed with which facsimile data can be exchanged between facsimile devices not over the PSTN, but over the public Internet. Referred to in the art as “IP faxing”, facsimile data can be packetized and forwarded across the Internet to a network node local to the facsimile recipient.
Of note, oftentimes, a document to be transmitted by facsimile is a form requiring completion of different fields, including informational fields as well as one or more signature fields. In this circumstance, it is intended that the end user complete all required fields of the document and return by facsimile at least those pages with the required fields. Yet, in the case where there are multiple pages of the document, occasionally the end user will neglect to complete all required fields prior to returning the document by facsimile. Consequently, upon discovering the incomplete nature of the document, the end user will be required to complete the missing fields of the form and retransmit a new facsimile of the document—a wasteful exercise. Further, to the extent that some pages of the document do not include any of the fields requiring completion, transmitting by facsimile those pages also can be wasteful.